China?!

Ancient culture in a modern world. Shopping paradise. Seas of people. Breathtaking skylines. Majestic scenery. Delicious food. Incredible skyscrapers. Wonders of the world seen first hand. Crying babies. Poop. Breastfeeding. Lots of breastfeeding.
At first you might not see the beauty of a trip to china with infant twins, but a closer view reveals a beautiful harmony. A sort of harmony...

Sure it would have been about a thousand times easier to do before the girls and we probably could have done and seen even more, but it really doesn't make up for the incredible experience it turned out to be. Plus, Lyla and June would never be asking to see pictures of just Brad and I in China over and over again. I  know they're going to love seeing these pictures one day.  It's comparable to how getting married automatically made everything in life fuller and better, having kids makes everything more complete and in turn gave us an even better vacation. :)

We travelled with Brad's longtime friend Cam, wife Brittny, and baby McKenna. We had good times and also a few trying times. Their family would probably like to not see me or the babies for a couple years ;), but we were able to laugh through it all- pretending we were the parents on home alone or national lampoons, creating the memories and dealing with the chaos of the new concept of "family vacation".

One could see the whole thing as a cruel way to torture our babies- dragging them all over a hot, humid land to see things they could care less about. But on the other hand, our girls were kind of treated like infant royalty- carried everywhere, constantly being entertained and stimulated by new sights and sounds- views from taxi windows and hundreds of Asians cooing and snapping pictures of them. They were fed on demand at anytime (they could dehydrate so easily in the humidity and it didn't seem fair since their schedules were so thrown off). In a sense the vacation was a baby paradise of sorts, they really seemed to enjoy it and I think they're going to be pretty bored here at home with me from now on. Wondering where their hundreds of new fans have gone, and their other parent to hold them all day... Sorry girls, it's just me again, bummer for you.
On the trip there may have been a minor bump or two, a mother's hysterical breakdown along the way, but all in all the trip was a huge success. We did basically everything we set out to do on our ambitious itinerary, we had fun doing it, and we all live to tell the tale. Success!

The aftermath is another story. The girls are used to being held all the time, sleeping in bed with us, and think it's night-night time in the middle of the day. I wrote this post at 4 AM night before last, why not when I'm stuck with wide awake babies when I'd like to be sleeping? May as well make use of the time!
I think I'll do a post for each leg of the trip (if the babies allow it, they really call the shots around here). Our trip can easily be divided into 4 mini vacations combined in one- Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The posts will most likely be overly wordy and adorned with way too many pictures- be warned & enjoy if you're into that sort of thing. :)